your

And, after all, if it were granted that a person is at liberty to take an assailant's life, in order to preserve his own, how is he to know, in the majority of instances, whether his own would be taken? When a man breaks into a person's house, and this person, as soon as he comes up with the robber, takes out a pistol and shoots him, we are not to be told that this man was killed "in defence of life." Or, go a step further, and a step further still, by which the intention of the robber to commit personal violence or inflict death is more and more probable; you must at last shoot him in uncertainty, whether life was endangered or not. Besides, you can withdraw,you can fly. None but the predetermined murderer wishes to commit murder. But, perhaps, you exclaim, "Fly! fly, and leave your property unprotected!" Yes,-unless you mean to say that preservation of property, as well as preservation of life, makes it lawful to kill an offender. This were to adopt a new and a very different proposition; but a proposition which I suspect cannot be separated in practice from the former. He who affirms that he may kill another in order to preserve his life, and that he may endanger his life in order to protect his property, does, in reality, affirm that he may kill another in order to preserve his property. But such a proposition, in an unconditional form, no one surely will tolerate. The laws of the land do not admit it, nor do they even admit the right of taking another's life simply because he is attempting to take ours. They require that we should be tender even of the murderer's life, and that we should fly rather than destroy it.*

We say that the proposition, that we may take life in order to preserve our property, is intolerable. To preserve how much?-five hundred pounds, or fifty, or ten, or a shilling, or a sixpence? It has actually been declared that the rights of self-defence "justify a man in taking all forcible methods which are necessary in order to procure the restitution of the freedom or the property of which he had been unjustly deprived." + All forcible methods to obtain restitution of property! No limit to the nature or effects of the force! No limit to the insignificance of the amount of the property! Apply, then, the rule. A boy snatches a bunch of grapes from a fruiterer's stall. The fruiterer runs after the thief, but finds that he is too light of foot to be overtaken. Moreover, the boy eats as he runs. "All forcible methods," reasons the fruiterer, "are justifiable to obtain restitution of property. I may fire after

* Blackstone: Com., v. 4, c. 4.

† Gisborne: Moral Philosophy.

the plunderer, and when he falls, regain my grapes." All this just and right, if Gisborne's proposition is true. It is a dangerous thing to lay down maxims in morality.

The conclusion, then, to which we are led by these inquiries is, that he who kills another, even upon the plea of self-defence, does not do it in the predominance nor in the exercise of Christian dispositions; and if this is true, is it not also true that his life cannot be thus taken in conformity with the Christian law?

But this is very far from concluding that no resistance may be made to aggression. We may make, and we ought to make, a great deal. It is the duty of the civil magistrate to repress the violence of one man towards another, and by consequence it is the duty of the individual, when the civil power cannot operate, to endeavor to repress it himself. I perceive no reasonable exception to the rule, that whatever Christianity permits the magistrate to do in order to restrain violence, it permits the individual, under such circumstances, to do also.

Many kinds of resistance to aggression come strictly within the fulfilment of the law of benevolence. He who, by securing or temporarily disabling a man, prevents him from committing an act of great turpitude, is certainly his benefactor; and if he be thus reserved for justice, the benevolence is great both to him and to the public. It is an act of much kindness to a bad man to secure him for the penalties of the law; or it would be such, if penal law were in the state in which it ought to be, and to which it appears to be making some approaches. It would then be very probable that the man would be reformed; and this is the greatest benefit which can be conferred upon him and upon the community.

The exercise of Christian forbearance towards violent men is not tantamount to an invitation of outrage. Cowardice is one thing; this forbearance is another. The man of true forbearance is of all men the least cowardly. It requires courage in a greater degree and of a higher order, to practise it when life is threatened, than to draw a sword or fire a pistol. No; it is the peculiar privilege of Christian virtue, to approve itself even to the bad. There is something in the nature of that calmness, and self-possession, and forbearance, that religion effects, which obtains, nay, which almost commands, regard and respect. How different the effect upon the violent tenants of Newgate, the hardihood of a turnkey and the mild courage of an Elizabeth Fry! Experience, incontestable experience,

has proved that the minds of few men are so depraved or desperate as to prevent them from being influenced by real Christian conduct. Let him therefore, who advocates the taking the life of an aggressor, first show that all other means of safety are vain; let him show that bad men, notwithstanding the exercise of true Christian forbearance, persist in their purposes of death; when he has done this, he will have adduced an argument in favor of taking their lives, which will not, indeed, be conclusive, but which will approach nearer to conclusiveness than any that has yet been adduced.

Of the consequences of forbearance, even in the case of personal attack, there are some examples. Archbishop Sharpe was assaulted by a footpad on the highway, who presented a pistol, and demanded his money. The archbishop spoke to the robber in the language of a fellow-man and of a Christian. The man was really in distress, and the prelate gave him such money as he had, and promised that if he would call at the palace, he would make up the amount to fifty pounds. This was the sum of which the robber had said he stood in the utmost need. The man called and received the money. About a year and a half afterward, this man again came to the palace, and brought back the same sum. He said that his circumstances had become improved, and that, through the "astonishing goodness" of the archbishop, he had become "the most penitent, the most grateful, and the happiest of his species." Let the reader consider how different the archbishop's feelings were, from what they would have been, if, by his hand, this man had been cut off.*

Barclay, the apologist, was attacked by a highwayman. He substituted for the ordinary modes of resistance a calm expostulation. The felon dropped his presented pistol, and offered no further violence. A Leonard Fell was similarly attacked, and from him the robber took both his money and his horse, and then threatened to blow out his brains. Fell solemnly spoke to the man on the wickedness of his life. The robber was astonished; he had expected, perhaps, curses, or perhaps a dagger. He declared he would not keep either the horse or the money, and returned both. "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head."+ The tenor of the short narrative that follows is somewhat different. Ellwood, who is known to the literary world as the

* See Lon. Chron., Aug. 12, 1785. See also Life of Granville Sharpe, Esq., p. 13. † Select Anecdotes, &c., by John Barclay.

suggester to Milton of Paradise Regained, was attending his father in his coach. Two men waylaid them in the dark, and stopped the carriage. Young Ellwood got out, and on going up to the nearest, the ruffian raised a heavy club, "when,' says Ellwood, "I whipped out my rapier, and made a pass upon him. I could not have failed running him through up to the hilt," but the sudden appearance of the bright blade terrified the man so that he stepped aside, avoided the thrust, and both he and the other fled. "At that time," proceeds Ellwood, "and for a good while after, I had no regret upon my mind for what I had done." This was while he was young, and when the forbearing principles of Christianity had little influence upon him. But afterward, when this influence became powerful, "a sort of horror," he says, "seized on me when I considered how near I had been to the staining of my hands with human blood. And whensoever afterward I went that way, and indeed as often since as the matter has come into my remembrance, my soul has blessed him who preserved and withheld me from shedding man's blood."*

That those over whom, as over Ellwood, the influence of Christianity is imperfect and weak, should think themselves at "liberty upon such occasions to take the lives of their fellowmen, needs to be no subject of wonder. Christianity, if we would rightly estimate its obligations, must be felt in the heart. They in whose hearts it is not felt, or felt but little, cannot be expected perfectly to know what its obligations are. I know not, therefore, that more appropriate advice can be given to him who contends for the lawfulness of taking another man's life in order to save his own, than that he would first inquire whether the influence of religion is dominant in his mind. If it is not, let him suspend his decision until he has attained to the fulness of the stature of a Christian man. Then, as he will be of that number who do the will of Heaven, he may hope to "know, of this doctrine, whether it be of God."

THE ALTON TRAGEDY.

THE murder of Lovejoy on the 7th of last November at Alton by a mob, called forth a burst of indignation from every quarter, and contributed to multiply adherents to the cause in which he fell. In this part of the result we sincerely rejoice; but we deeply lament, that the great body of abolitionists should have sanctioned the use

Ellwood's Life.

of such carnal weapons as Lovejoy and his friends employed. They have thus been guilty of bad faith; they have violated their solemn pledge to the public. We had good reasons to expect they would use only moral means. Some of their leaders were well known as decided peace men; and the American Anti-Slavery Society, in their Constitution and their Declaration of Sentiments, gave the solemn assurances, that "our weapons shall be such only as the opposition of moral purity to moral corruption;"-"this Society will never in any way countenance the oppressed in vindicating their rights by resorting to physical force;-our principles forbid the doing of evil that good may come, and lead us to reject, and to entreat the oppressed to reject, the use of all carnal weapons for deliverance from bondage, relying solely upon those which are spiritual, and mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds."

What was our surprise, then, to see the American Anti-Slavery Society studiously abstaining, in all its official communications with the public on the subject, from the utterance of a word in disapprobation of the course pursued by Lovejoy in arming himself to defend his press! Ingenuity has been tortured to palliate the bloody resistance made by the friends of freedom at Alton; we have heard a leading officer of the Massachusetts Society declare, that their chief error lay not in killing one of the assailants, but in not killing forty; and abolitionists as a body now stand before the country as responsible endorsers for what their murdered brother did, and as advocates of the right to use the sword in defence of property, and freedom of speech.

The deed is done; and it is too late, we fear, for abolitionists fully to retrieve this error. They seem, indeed, to glory in "taking the responsibility" of Lovejoy's resort to the rifle in defence of his rights; and the national Society at its late anniversary voted, "by an overwhelming majority," to discard that part of the declaration of their own sentiments which had pledged them to a pacific policy. The mask is off; and most deeply do we regret to see them now standing before the world as sticklers for the right of bloodshed in the prosecution of their enterprise. This is the plain English of their doings as a body; and the community must henceforth regard them as determined to free the slaves by argument if they can, by force if they must. We have ourselves heard this very sentiment avowed by one of their leaders, a warm apologist for the rectitude of Lovejoy's conduct in defending his press by the sword; and though few abolitionists now look to such an extension of the principle, they are unconsciously cherishing its spirit, and will probably find most of their future recruits so filled with it, as to make it in the end pervade the whole movement. The peace men in their ranks

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